My Lords, I compliment my noble friend on his amendment, which has the great benefit of substantial simplicity and great logic behind it. I urge the Minister to look at it. This may be the compromise that we are looking for and could come back to on Report.
Everyone agrees that we are very concerned about endangered species; no one can say for one moment that they are not. However, under the very wide drafting of this Bill, less than 4% of the species it covers are trophy hunted anywhere in the world. I do not know whether noble Lords knew that. Only 1% of species covered by it have been imported to the UK since 2000. Some 79% of hunting trophies are from species that are stable, increasing and abundant, which is quite a compelling figure.
As I pointed out earlier, on average two trophies of wild lions and 115 trophies in all are imported into the UK every year. We are talking about a very specialist, niche issue here, yet we have all those unintended consequences, which I shall talk about at a later stage—maybe if my noble friend Lord Mancroft’s amendment is reached later this evening or on another occasion, and certainly on Report.
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One must look in the round at what everyone is trying to achieve and what the Conservative manifesto set out to achieve. My noble friend is quite right that the manifesto said:
“We will … ban imports from trophy hunting of endangered species”—
the emphasis being on endangered species. That is what we signed up to. What we did not sign up to was something that went much wider, and that is exactly why the Bill needs to be improved.
I urge the Minister not to reject this amendment out of hand. Maybe he could say to my noble friend, who has already made two intelligent, well-balanced and well-received interventions this evening—he is to be applauded for that—that he will take this amendment away and look at it, because obviously, the way things are going, Committee on the Bill has some way to run, and then we have Report as well. We can come back on Report.
I certainly remember from my time as a Minister that there were nights in Committee when we would go through Bills at great length and suddenly inspiration would strike and a gem would come up from a parliamentarian, such as we have seen from my noble friend. I think the Minister should take the amendment away, look at it and come back on Report. I certainly support my noble friend.